Unemployment

A Hawk In Dove's Clothing ... June Swoon Is Back ... 'We Have A Task Force On That'

Jun 17, 2026 4 min read

We weren't surprised by most of the news following today's FOMC meeting. We expected the committee to pivot from April's easing bias to a tightening bias, and they did. We expected the committee to acknowledge that, in their dual mandate, the risk of higher inflation had risen, while the risk of higher unemployment had fallen, and they did. The FOMC's Summary of

Ed Yardeni
Elias Griepentrog

Nirvana: Will Somebody Tell The Fed That We Have Arrived?

Feb 18, 2026 4 min read paid

The Fed achieved its congressional dual mandate in January. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, and the CPI inflation rate was down to 2.4% y/y. Those round down to what we call “Nirvana” readings, i.e., the low unemployment level of 4.0% and the Fed’s inflation target of 2.0% (chart). Fed officials should celebrate and go on a long vacation. They can leave the

Ed Yardeni
Toby Hearst

Desperately Seeking AI Immunity ... January's Pleasant Jobs Surprise

Feb 11, 2026 4 min read paid

I. AI Immunity Is The New AI Trade After ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022, investors scrambled to overweight the AI trade, mostly by overweighting the Magnificent-7 (chart). That worked out great until the DeepSeek surprise on January 20, 2025. The AI trade made a big comeback on April 9, 2025, when President Donald Trump postponed his "Liberation Day" tariffs, and after datacenter hyperscalers reiterated their

Ed Yardeni

US Labor Market Is In Balance

Sep 5, 2025 3 min read

August's employment report was released this morning. It was weaker than expected. The month's payrolls rose by just 22,000. June's number was revised down by 27,000 to a decline of 13,000, while July's number was revised up by 6,000 to 79,000. August's big losers were goods producers (-25,000), professional & business services (-17,000,

Ed Yardeni

Musical Chairs & Policies At The Fed

Aug 7, 2025 3 min read

President Donald Trump on Thursday nominated Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran to serve out the remaining term of Federal Reserve Governor Adriana Kugler. Trump said Miran will serve in the role until January 31, 2026, while he continues a search for a permanent replacement. The Senate will probably confirm his nomination quickly and before the September meeting of the FOMC. If so, then there could be at least

Ed Yardeni

Trump Dealing ... Consumers Consuming ... Employers Employing

Jul 17, 2025 4 min read paid

Liberation Day II is coming on August 1. President Donald Trump has stated that it won't be postponed, unlike Liberation Day I, which was initially scheduled for April 2 but was postponed to July 9 and then to August 1. According to a July 10 Reuters report, Trump is considering raising his 10% base tariff to 15% or 20% on most trading partners by that deadline. That would

Ed Yardeni

ECONOMIC WEEK AHEAD: June 2 - 6

Jun 1, 2025 3 min read

There's no question that President Donald Trump is stress testing the resilience of the economy with what we've been (objectively) calling Trump's Tariff Turmoil (TTT). The latest developments on Friday: Trump declared that China is violating terms agreed upon in its trade deal with the US, and he raised the tariff on aluminum and steel from 25% to 50%. Nevertheless, the resilience of the

Ed Yardeni
William Pesek

FOMC Day Minus One: Waiting For Nothing

May 6, 2025 3 min read paid

The federal funds rate (FFR) futures market has consistently been predicting several cuts in the FFR since March 2023 (chart). The Fed did deliver three rate cuts totaling 100bps from September 18 through December 18, 2024. Since then, Fed officials have said that they are in no hurry to lower the FFR again. Nevertheless, the FFR futures market is currently anticipating two rate cuts over the next six months and

Ed Yardeni

Is The Economy On The Edge?

May 1, 2025 3 min read

The good news is that the Magnificent-7 are still magnificent. Three of them (Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft) beat earnings expectations for Q1. We've been arguing that while AI may or may not make money for the providers of Large Language Models, the result will be more demand for cloud computing. That should be good news for at least four of the Mag-7. The bad news is

Ed Yardeni

Strongest Buy Signal Ever?

Apr 24, 2025 3 min read paid

On Sunday (April 20), we observed that The Economist had just featured three consecutive very bearish cover stories suggesting that the dollar might be on the verge of collapse and that so might the US stock and bond markets along with the US economy. Make that four consecutive bearish cover stories, with this week's magazine showing an eagle battered by Trump's first 100 days (image). We

Ed Yardeni

Bond Vigilantes Remain Unhappy

Apr 10, 2025 3 min read

It was not a happy day in the bond market. Neither was it a happy day in the stock market: Bond Market. The 10-year Treasury bond yield rose to 4.45% this evening, up from a recent low of 4.01% on April 4, two days after Liberation Day. Yesterday, President Donald Trump partially postponed Liberation Day because the bond market was "tricky." It remained tricky today.

Ed Yardeni

US Economy Is Still Resilient, But Tariffs Pose Risks

Mar 20, 2025 3 min read

Today's batch of economic data releases was positive on balance but also suggests that Trump Tariff Turmoil 2.0 could dampen future growth. Stock prices seesawed between gains and losses, while Treasury yields slid a bit. Markets continue to suggest that economic growth outside of the US is increasingly likely to improve while downside risks to US growth are rising. As a result, US stock valuation multiples are

Ed Yardeni

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